I'm not sure why there has been such a strong animus throughout the history of Christianity against acknowledging the Divine Feminine, but its existence is undeniable. It begins in Judaism, and it runs through the Roman Catholic Church, but finds its greatest expression in Protestantism. In Judaism, there are secret teachings that embrace the Great Mother, and in Catholicism there has always been an undercurrent of goddess worship in the form of Mary, mother of Jesus, even though strenuous attempts were made to suppress it. Mary worship is stronger today than it has been for centuries in the Roman church. But even though the acknowledgement of the Great Goddess has never been wholly absent in Christianity, it has always been looked upon with suspicion and disapproval by the male authorities in the Church. The American Baptists have driven out goddess worship almost entirely, along with all other religious symbolism, and Baptist churches are the poorer for it. Always, in the secret currents of Christianity the Great Mother and the Queen of Heaven have been adored and exalted. They appear in the Kabbalistic texts of the Jews. In the Christian Gnostic cults of the second century of our era, the Great Mother is expressed through Barbelo, and the Queen of Heaven through Sophia. The Great Mother, as her title suggests, is the womb of creation, and the Queen of Heaven is the resplendent glory of God manifested in wisdom, or *gnosis*. Sophia is, in a sense, the daughter of Barbelo. These two goddesses express two aspects of the Divine Feminine -- the fruitful and nurturing mother, and the beautiful and alluring lover. Man is allured by truth, which is the attraction of Sophia that cannot be denied, even though the leaders of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have done their best to crush this allure for centuries. It can never be crushed. Truth can never be crushed. Christianity is impoverished by a denial of the female aspects of God. But those aspects will always break forth in the worship of the common people, because they are necessary for a full and complete gnosis of God.